


Re-Education

by bluemoodblue



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, Re-Education, slight injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-31 05:45:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemoodblue/pseuds/bluemoodblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil attends more re-education sessions than the average Night Vale citizen, and the company is always terrible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Re-Education

The brick walls of the basement of City Hall chilled the room while bright, florescent lights illuminated everything too harshly, making the shadows along the wall deep but too small for anything to hide.  Cecil shifted in the hard, uncomfortable chair as the figure near the wall droned in a ceaseless monotone.  His hand twitched into a fist before he forced it to relax.  He knew what was coming next.  He had been forced into the basement too many times not to know exactly what re-education entailed.

Steve Carlsberg raised his hand, and Cecil did his best not to groan aloud.

Cecil had never particularly cared for Steve, even from the first time they met, in which the large man expressed his doubts over the actual benefit of community radio and punched Cecil lightly in the shoulder as he laughed booming and obnoxiously, as though physical violence was an appropriate measure to take when trying to convince another individual of your clever wit.  There might have been a snide remark on the radio program the next morning, and some distasteful glances over public functions when they happened to encounter each other.

Somehow, though, because the grave and terrible forces beyond the edge of the universe deemed it so, or because his luck was just that bad, he and Steve Carlsberg’s frequent re-education sessions were always scheduled on the same evenings, forcing them into immediate proximity to each other for several tedious hours at a time.  It did little to help their relationship; as the re-educator droned on late into the night about all of the information that it was municipally mandated they were not allowed to know, Steve seemed to find issue with absolutely everything.  It was physically  _impossible_  for that to happen to wheat and wheat byproducts, according to his  _expert_  opinion, and why were dangerous creatures kept in the library instead of regular librarians like literally every other town in America, and dog parks were not supposed to look like that.  Cecil wasn’t sure how a man who worked in  _used care sales_  was suddenly confident in his authority on absolutely everything, but he was not hesitant to assert it, loudly.  It was very nearly worth the single-vital-organ fine required to sit out from a session.

“We let our children go to school with machine guns, but not pencils?  That doesn’t make any kind of sense, if you ask me.  What’s a kid gonna do with a pencil that he can’t do with a gun?”

“It’s not the potential damage posed by the writing utensil,” the instructor meekly explained, again, for the third time since the session began, “it’s the ban on writing utensils specifically.”

Most citizens of Night Vale would accept that explanation and move on with their lives, but not Steve Carlsberg.  No, Steve Carlsberg would not be satisfied until he had inconvenienced as many people as possible.

“That’s no kind of way to run a town.  That’s not how the rest of America does it, and that’s not how we should do it here.  Who they hell decided that was something that needed a law?  We should be doing something about all of that irresponsible government spending, building a waterfront-whatever-it-was in a town in the middle of the desert, who’s ever heard of…”

Cecil did his best to tune the large man out.  He had to stop talking eventually, Cecil always told himself, and it would be far more satisfying to tell the town at large about the incident over the radio in the morning rather than confront him to his face.  Most of the time, Cecil was fairly successful in keeping himself calm; personally, he attributed it to the soothing sound of the instructor’s voice, which was almost hypnotic.

Tonight was different, though, because tonight Cecil had to cancel a date with Carlos.  Carlos was, of course, very understanding and gracious about the entire situation, but that didn’t mean that Cecil wasn’t determined to at least try to see his wonderful boyfriend for a couple of hours before going home.  The success of his plan depended on the re-education session ending as quickly as possible, and Steve Carlsberg – Steve Carlsberg, with his horrible array of colored polo’s, his white picket fence that clashed horribly with his neighborhood’s décor, and his disturbing and obsessive fascination with contact-heavy sports – was getting in the way of that.

Cecil had very little patience for anyone who got in the way of quality time with his boyfriend.

Steve had only just gotten into the swing of his current rant when Cecil decided he’d had enough and slammed his fist down on the table.  It hurt a bit more than he’d anticipated, but it was worth the pain for the instant attention he received from everyone else in the room.  Even the source of the radio host’s ire was startled enough to halt in his booming criticism of seemingly every single aspect of the town that he could draw to mind.

“Steve Carlsberg,” he began grandly, rising from his seat slowly in a gesture of intimidation that he was not normally able to indulge in, “are you so afraid of the tenuous existence of your own reality that you feel the need to force it upon others?  Do you doubt your own idea of normalcy so completely that you fear it will cease to exist if you do not remind the universe at great volume what you think it has promised you?  I remind you that you are a member of this community, no matter what you or the community has to say about it, and you are going to behave like a member of this community, because Night Vale is all you have that is certain in this vast, impenetrable void.  It is the final physical tie that binds you to reality and you will not  _question_  it, and you  _will not anger it_.  Do not mock your link to your existence, Steve Carlsberg, because it has  _not_  been promised to you.”

There was stark silence in the room as Cecil took his seat again, brimming with satisfaction.  Steve stared at him for a moment before sitting down as well, and Cecil might have burst with pride at finally achieving something very close to an actual victory over that jerk.

“Well,” the instructor meekly began, “that was quite eloquently put, Mr. Palmer.”  Cecil beamed – it had been a rather inspiring bit of prose, hadn’t it, Carlos would be so proud – “…but I’m afraid the extended interruption from you both will require another re-education session for you and Mr. Carlsberg.”

Cecil didn’t bother to conceal his groan.

~~~

“Another session already?”  Carlos looked concerned, but the expression might have been the result of his task, since he was closely and carefully examining Cecil’s now-bruised hand.  It had drawn his immediate attention when Cecil walked in, and he insisted that he wouldn’t listen to a word Cecil had to say until it was seen to.  They were sitting at the scientist’s kitchen table with the first aid kit open and prepared, and the “seeing to” of the injury didn’t seem to put Carlos’s mind particularly at ease. “What did you do this time?  …and what did you do to your hand?  I think you’ve fractured a bone.”

“It was that darn Steve Carlsberg,” Cecil growled, Carlos frantically reaching out to stop him from slamming his other fist against the table.  “He always does this, you know, starts telling everyone about how everything in Night Vale is  _backwards_  and  _wrong_ , and a “ _government conspiracy_ ” when really all he wants is attention.  It’s pathetic, and I was so hoping that I would get to see you tonight that I just couldn’t let him really get started because he can go on for hours, that Steve Carlsberg, and I just…”  Cecil noticed his boyfriend staring at him and trailed off.  “What is it?”

Carlos bent his head back over Cecil’s hand, feeling each of the bones in gentle embraces, but Cecil could still see the smile overtaking his face.  “You really wanted to see me that badly?”

“Well of course,” Cecil replied and could have gone on for hours, but he was pretty sure that Carlos knew most of what he would say by now anyway.  They grinned at each other goofily until Carlos found the exact problem area on Cecil’s hand.

He removed a few supplies from the first aid kit.  “This is definitely broken.  Probably not very badly, but you should try to avoid using it very much for a while.”  He placed Cecil’s hand on the table.  “I like spending time with you, too, but could you please refrain from injuring yourself in the process?”

As it happened, the next incident with Steve Carlsberg involved copious amounts of acid and considerably less injury to his boyfriend, so Carlos supposed it was as good of a compromise as he could expect.

**Author's Note:**

> My headcanon for re-education is much more angst-inducing, but I liked the idea of it being handled like traffic tickets and Cecil being forced to attend with Steve Carlsberg. This was supposed to be a short blurb and I don't know what happened... ^_^; Anyway, thanks for reading!


End file.
